Pan Am Pt. 1: The Beginnings
Pan Am. They’ve been gone for over 30 years, but their influence is still felt the world over even today. Even if you’ve never heard of them, or seen their planes, chances are you know something about them. Do you know about “Clipper” or “The Globe”? Well, if you don’t, surely you know or at least benefit from their influence: have you ever sat in a row called “economy class?” Pan Am invented that. Have you, for good or for bad, eaten an airplane meal? Pan Am invented that. And have you ever flown from America to another country, whatever country that may be? Pan Am created transatlantic travel.
If you’ve ever set foot on a plane, you enjoy the innovations of Pan Am. Almost every convenience from food to lounges to jumbo jets can be chalked up to Pan Am’s and founder Juan Trippe’s ambitious vision. So why aren’t they around today? If a company was that innovative, shouldn’t they have lasted longer than six decades? It was because of a lot of issues. From mismanagement to oil embargoes to bombings, Pan Am really got the short end of the stick, especially in the 80s and 90s, which led to its fall. Today, we’ll explore how Pan Am became the largest airline in the world, but also how that pristine reputation fell.
Juan H. Trippe
No recollection of Pan Am could be complete without a background of the life of Juan Trippe. Trippe was not your quiet, modest businessman who was calm and well-spoken. He was the opposite: he hated compromise, made big decisions without consulting managers, and he had pride almost as large as his airplanes. Yet somehow, that boisterous and prideful personality never obstructed his way of innovating, improving and succeeding.
Trippe was born in Monmouth County, New Jersey in 1899 to a family of wealthy New York bankers and the great-grandson of famous Lieutenant John Trippe. He was, contrary to popular belief, not Hispanic; he was named after his great Uncle’s wife “Juanita.” Juan had by all means a decently privileged childhood, attending preparatory schools like The Hill School before enrolling in Yale University in 1917. Trippe left Yale briefly in 1918 to enroll in the U.S. Navy. As a young boy fascinated with planes, he was commissioned as an Ensign, but poor eyesight and the end of WWI prematurely ended his dreams. He returned to Yale, joining the Skull and Bones society and National Intercollegiate Flying Association before graduating in 1921.
So far, Trippe seems to be an unremarkable, yet somewhat successful young man: after all, how many people attend preparatory schools and serve in the Navy? But it was his adult years that would cement his legendary status. Juan began working on Wall Street after graduation, but found himself bored. His interest was in planes–as a young boy he had seen the flight of the Wright Brothers and soon was enamored with planes. In 1922, he decided to ask his Yale friends for funds for his company Long Island Airways, an air-taxi service for the ultra-rich. That folded in two years, but just a few months later he would ask his friends for money again for investments in the airliner Colonial Air Transport. That company survived a bit longer, folding in four years.
Trippe couldn’t have been happy. He had failed in his investments multiple times and his friends couldn’t support him forever. With slight trepidation, he looked to further opportunities. He created Aviation Corporation Of The Americas, which later acquired multiple small airliners. Aviation Corporation Of The Americas then became the holding company of Pan American Airways Inc., a shell company created by three U.S. Army Air Corps (now U.S. Air Force) officers Henry Arnold, Carl Spaatz and John Jouett. Pan Am acquired landing rights for Havana, and in 1927, miraculously got a Fairchild FC-2 plane chartered to them at the very last moment, allowing them to complete their first flight. Soon, Aviation Corporations Of The Americas would merge its branches as one and change the name to Pan American Airways Corp, or Pan Am as we know it today. The legacy had begun.
The Clippers
In the 1930s, delivery had been a chronic issue. It took too long. Did you, a man in Britain, want to write to your parents in Japan? It would take the letter six weeks to be delivered there, and six weeks for it to be returned. It would take almost 1/4th of a year, and especially considering the turbulence of the 30’s with the Great Depression and political instability and other issues… things could change in a flash. But that couldn’t be helped. After all, people used ships. Ships traveled as quickly as the wind and sea took them; if the waters were rough, or the wind didn’t blow, the best sailor in the world couldn’t change that. And so delivery was undesirable and frustrating.
But Pan Am changed that. Juan Trippe had the novel idea of using airplanes as a delivery medium. This was rather new—sure, airplanes existed for two decades before, but they were dangerous, for short flights, and mostly for air shows: using it for long-term delivery was seen to be insane. You had ships, which were methods of delivery for centuries… and you had planes, which were unproven and unwieldy. What would you use to deliver goods? Most would say ships, but Trippe said planes.
And so Pan Am purchased S-40’s and Consolidated Commodores, and began seaplane service. Pan Am named all of its planes with Clipper (after classic sailing ships), and 28 different shipping planes, from China Clipper and Caribbean Clipper, began to operate shipping from the U.S. to Latin America. In 1937, Pan Am radically expanded by offering services transatlantically, to Europe and the Caribbean through Bermuda and the Azores. Pan Am was truly making a name for itself, but its next milestone would be in passenger travel.
Boeing 314’s
Imagine a large boat-like seaplane with wings able to fly but land on water. That is what best describes the flying boat: a seaplane of no common ability.
The large size of the flying boat allowed it to truly emphasize luxury travel: The Boeing 314 Clippers could seat up to 74 passengers and 10 crew in distances up to 3,500 miles, a feat beyond the imaginations of even the wildest aviation enthusiasts at that time. It could travel overnight transatlantically, which ships took months to do.
And life on the Clipper arguably trumps life on a plane today: passengers were sheltered in personal cabins, containing a couch, a small bed, a dining salon, dressing rooms and bathrooms. It was the wildest dream of every aviation enthusiast. And back then, travel was monopolized to only the first-class: to fly, you had to be rich and powerful. And thus flying was a status of wealth: a world before hijackings, passenger rage and cheap airline meals. All on airliners with luxurious and dreamy names like the Dixie, China and Munich.
Not to say everything about flying was perfect: regular people could only view flying as a dream. And old B314 Clippers without autopilot or GPWS systems did crash quite often, as was the case with one that had a landing accident in a Portugal air base. But that was to be expected in a time where planes were merely glorified metal ships that were somehow capable of flying. Flying boats were a revolutionary way to get Pan Am into the public eye, but not all was perfect in corporateland.
Trippe and Sonny’s Feud
During Pan Am’s successes, you would think it was all roses and cream in the world of business operations. Not so at all. Juan Trippe was a businessman very intent on getting his own way, exemplified by his boorish temper and perfectionism. This made employees less likely to respect and admire him. Even his board showed his need for control: it was hand-picked, made up of mostly his friends. Well, at least that was the case at first. Trippe then hired business associates and experts in various travel fields including transportation and trade to get expertise and connections in a well-rounded variety of aviation fields. But the downside to this was that these men were experts in their own right: they did not always answer to Trippe and sometimes they did contrary to his suggestions. As one could guess, this made Trippe gradually more and more furious. But despite this, the airline was run meticulously: there were relatively few crashes, the B314 Clipper was pristine in the public eye, and it was the largest airline in the world in every aspect, from mileage to number of aircraft to number of passengers. But things could not stay perfect forever: in 1938, revenue stalled so badly stock dividends were paid in pennies.
The board was furious and named Cornelius Vanderbilt Whitney “Sonny” as the CEO of Pan Am. Juan was still president, but he was now under Sonny’s whims. This made Trippe livid. He wasn’t angry at losing his “CEO” title, per se: after all, Sonny had gained that title multiple times in the 30s. But every time, the company and everybody, including Sonny, had fallen under Trippe’s absolute control. This time, however, Trippe was Sonny’s subordinate. This was something Trippe could not live with. And although Sonny had good intentions—he had grasped the title for others not to take it—Trippe never saw things that way. Sonny was a threat.
Sonny was decent but Pan Am disinterested him. He was interested in his film production company, his well-maintained thoroughbreds, and his love towards philanthropy. He could sign his name on paperwork but Trippe managed the airline. Still, Juan was fuming. Sonny took Trippe’s office, so Trippe took a smaller one at the end of the hallway, arranging it so that he could see who visited Sonny’s office first and who avoided him.
Every board meeting soon became a chore. Trippe was meticulous, arriving to every single meeting with incredible punctuality. But he would never speak except to voice his displeasure with corporate. He would vote but always against the interests of the board. And he glared. He glared at Sonny, Sonny’s friends, the men he held responsible for ouster, and mostly everyone in general. People grew to the point where they thought Juan would lose it… but he stayed calm.
He didn’t need action, after all. The company was run by him and nobody could do much without asking him for help. And this caused enormous tension. Pan Am employees were advised to ask only Juan for questions and never Sonny as Juan’s return was a foregone conclusion. Miraculously, Pan Am continued earning profit around this feud, due to decentralization of local areas. But on the higher-up side, all roads lead to nobody, as nobody was willing to do anything that could potentially enrage Trippe, which was pretty much everything.
Sonny grew miserable. He could no longer take his former best friend antagonizing him on a daily basis. He resigned just as WWII began in Europe to pursue other interests. He remained nominal CEO but didn’t attend a meeting and Juan Trippe never spoke to him again. The board, in a move that shocked no one, transferred powers back to Juan Trippe. Trippe decided to enact his own policies to combat low supply and profit during wartime, and he soon led Pan Am to a new era. He just lost a friend or two doing it, as well as a few formerly supportive members of the Board. But he didn’t care. He had enough friends anyway.
Wartime
During WWII, America needed weapons and artillery. Lots of them. So many B314 passenger Clippers were pressed into military service. Pan Am painted the beautiful silver-blue planes with military camouflage. Pilots and engineers began serving the military. America at wartime was still relatively inexperienced: men were short because not all enlisted, machine quality was substandard and those who enlisted certainly weren’t all experienced. Pan Am made up for these shortcomings with well-trained men and high-tech machines.
The airline also offered transports internationally. It was the only airliner in the world that could do so, and do so with great expertise and updated technology. In 1942, Allied Forces flew planes between a dangerous route between the Himalayas, nicknamed “The Hump” to get resources for Chinese soldiers on Japanese enemy lines. A majority of the pilots at that time were Pan Am employees. For three years, The Hump was the main source of hope and resources for Chinese soldiers, delivering thousands of tons of food and weapons to give a much-needed morale boost. In addition, the B314 Clipper was also the first “Air Force One” in sort: It transported FDR transatlantically, from the USA to Africa, a real achievement for Pan Am. But there was something even more remarkable Pan Am had done.
Uranium was needed for the atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, but uranium was severely limited: shuttered at Gabon, in Africa. The problem was the Nazi U-Boats that were there to prevent American ships from entering, so Clippers carried uranium ores to the U.S. at high altitudes discreetly, to Oak Ridge Tennesee, where it would be converted into the ingredients necessary for atomic bombs. The majority of the uranium in the A-Bomb dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki was shuttered from Pan Am flights. Many Pan Am pilots earned Purple Heart Medals for their service, and Pan Am’s reputation soared. Now, WWII was over, and it was time to expand.